


On the Eve of War.

by janboy



Category: League of Legends
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2018-04-30
Packaged: 2019-04-30 06:20:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14490717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janboy/pseuds/janboy
Summary: Pantheon and Leona have one last conversation before Pantheon goes off with the Rakkor as the initial defense of Targon.





	On the Eve of War.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this primarily based on the 'Old Lore' of Targon before the updates to each of the major champions with the aspects also without the introduction of the void as a threat, aurelion sol, zoe, and taric.

A thousand red cloaks swayed in the wind. In complete unison, a thousand scarlet feathers on the wing of a great beast, a phoenix, one whose fate whether it be ashes or glory, would be met with indifference regardless of the outcome.

The phoenix had a duty, a duty so powerful that it keeps the phoenix from flying rightfully into the great star, a duty that traded carefree liberty for sharpened talons to fight and die for its home.

A thousand Rakkor stood at the ready. All of them in impeccably neat rows, faced towards the mountain path which would lead them down to Targon’s base. Behind them, stood Pantheon on a rise flat of stone. And behind the Paragon was the closed gates of the Rakkor camp.

The stillness in the air was different on this eve of war. Pantheon still had yet to reach his 30th year, but he had fought and bled since he was old enough to walk. Such was their way of life. But, on all those days where lives were lost and forcibly taken, Pantheon had felt some sort of welcoming in the air, on the wind and against his skin. As though the mountain itself recognized who he is, who his people are, and what they must do. Just like the generations of Rakkor that came before him. It wasn’t there. Instead, all Pantheon tasted in the air was smoke and ash, a taint that spread like a plague through Targon’s air, spread from the smoke-spewing war machines which lurched and climbed slowly up Targon’s treacherous paths.

Pantheon took one final look towards his home,

-it was silent. No sentries, no family or friends watched them prepare to march. He already ordered his people to the summit, amongst the Solari.

Pantheon placed his helmet upon his head and took a step forward, but a sudden grip on his arm stopped him in place. He turned, and already tensed muscles only relaxed slightly when he met her eyes.

She was adorned in full armor. Even though the sun’s morning rays were weak and stifled by clouds, her armor, her eyes, still seemed to shine with their own light. But in those eyes, Pantheon saw the same clouds that hung low and dark above him. He saw a tumultuous mixture of sadness, anger, and restraint.

-what he confused for sadness in her eyes, was actually grief. Grief for lives still lived, grief for those to be lost.

Her hand didn’t linger on on his arm for longer than necessary. Pantheon saw her sword and shield some feet behind her, propped against a large stone. Instead of finding comfort in her weapons, she slowly folded her arms over her stomach and met Pantheon’s gaze unblinking.

“Will you still refuse to take any of the Ra-Horak,” Leona said, her voice quiet. She had said the same sentence to him the day before, and the day before that, at a volume much louder and angered. And he had shouted back at her, for hours they argued over what they should do, neither of them believing the other in the right. Now, Pantheon could see the toll that it had taken on her. Beneath her eyes, faint, but visible, dark patches from lack of sleep. He heard a slight hoarseness in her voice.

“We don’t need them,” another response that she had heard before, that she expected. Silence returned after the last word left his tongue, and Leona looked to the side. Pantheon watched as she bit down on her lower lip and momentarily lost herself in thought. A habit, it seemed, that hadn’t left her after all these years. Then, a thought unfit for the few hours before battle burrowed its way to the forefront of Pantheon’s mind.

She was high up in the branches of a tree. The leaves were still plentiful, fall still had some weeks to wait before it brought its orange-yellow palette to Targon’s forests. Pantheon stood at the bottom of the tree, eyes wide and jumping from one foot to the other as he watched Leona’s ascent. He held his breath as she climbed, and he let out a startled yelp as a branch she used to climb to one of the higher rungs of the tree snapped and fell to the ground beside him. Leona let out a hoot of excitement, and finally she sat herself down on a thick branch and peered towards the reward for her efforts. A birds nest that she had spotted in passing.

But that buildup of excitement was released in a heavy and disappointed sigh, as the nest’s contents were solely composed of discarded feathers and egg shells.

“There’s nothing here!” She called down. Pantheon mirrored her sigh below, dejectedly kicking a pinecone across the grass.

But then his head shot up, concern painted across his face.

“How will you get down?”

Leona scratched her head and looked down. The crucial branch that led her to her current seat, and which would have led her down to the ground, had snapped and fell. She bit her lip and looked around. The first time Pantheon had noticed that quirk of hers, a sight that he had imprinted in his memory on that day. After a few moments of quiet, she came to and looked down again, but this time straight towards him.

“If I fell, would you catch me?”

Pantheon laughed, a small smile crept across his lips as he looked towards her, as though he was waiting for her to join in on the laughter. But when he saw that her face remained unchanged, he stepped forward and placed one of his hands against the tree trunk.

“Well, yeah I would–”

All Pantheon heard was giggling above him before she leapt.

Smoke. The smell of smoke brought him back. Only a handful of seconds had actually passed. Leona still looked to the side, losing herself within her mind. In this moment she looked burdened and pensive, but as Pantheon looked towards her, echoes of that giggle bounced around in his mind, enough to make the corner of his lip tug upwards in a weak smile.

“Besides,” he began quietly, “if they get past us you will need all the Ra-Horak you have.”

Leona slowly shook her head and closed her eyes. After a deep inhale, she reopened them and met Pantheon’s gaze. Finally, the sadness had triumphed in the war of emotions swimming in her eyes, and Pantheon’s half-smile disappeared upon meeting her gaze.

“We’ve fought our whole lives, Leona.”

“This is different. It feels unnatural, the mountain, the sun, I’m standing on the place I’ve lived all my life but on this day I feel like a stranger Pantheon.”

Her voice wavered as she spoke, her right hand unfolded and she extended that hand to lightly press her fingers beneath Pantheon’s helmet, against his cheek. He felt the same thing she spoke of. The very stone beneath his feet didn’t feel like his own. The word home had meant Targon for all his life, home meant the Rakkor and his people. But in this moment, the word home existed within that light contact of Leona’s touch against his skin. Pantheon’s left hand rose from his side and he slowly wrapped it around Leona’s wrist. The curve of her hand, the way the muscle and bone felt beneath her glove, he memorized it all in the small squeeze that he gave, in the light brush of his thumb against the back of her hand. But, as the watery buildup in Leona’s eyes began to mirror in his own, he gently pushed her hand away and blinked.

Pantheon turned away from her and began the long walk towards those thousand cloaks, towards that thousand feathered wing. In stride he retrieved his spear and shield. There was a familiarity in that worn wooden shaft, in the metal grip. He used to feel home there too. But, as he began the rhythmic war-beat of stomp and shield, the shouts and cadence matched by his Rakkor, Pantheon’s mind still envisioned that hand wrapped around hers, the skin on his cheek where she had touched still felt like icy-fire, burning itself into him permanently.

And she watched him go. She spoke only three words to the wind, hoping that it would carry over this last message in spirit from the growing gloom she felt within her,

“Good luck, Paragon.”


End file.
